Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1535972
47 CIO / HEALTH IT Why VCU Health's CIO pays to shut down IT systems By Giles Bruce V CU Health CIO Ellen Wiegand said it's "not flashy" to say you're spending money to turn off old IT systems, but it's necessary to make way for emerging technologies like AI. Ms. Wiegand was recently recognized for her IT work at the Richmond, Va.-based health system when she was nominated for an ORBIE award for the nation's top healthcare CIO. Becker's spoke with Ms. Wiegand about the IT projects and trends she's excited about nowadays, as well as the biggest obstacles facing healthcare IT executives. Question: What is a recent IT project at VCU Health that you're particularly excited about? Ellen Wiegand: One of the most transformative things we've done here recently is implementing our ambient listening technology for provider documentation. We're piloting those tools with a group of providers, and have just had tremendous feedback in a really short period of time. We went from contract signature to implementation in a matter of four weeks, and it's been super well-received. It's not oen you get feedback from providers saying new technology is life-changing, but that's what's happening. ey're generally feeling less stress, like they're able to really focus on the patient throughout their visit, rather than the computer, and in some cases, are actually able to see more patients in a day. So that's a big win for us thus far, and I'm excited to see where we go from here with these types of tools as we roll them out to more clinicians. Q: What industry trend in health IT are you most excited about? EW: We can't not talk about AI. One of our strategic themes here at VCU Health is workforce wellness, and one of our guiding principles around the use of AI is to empower team members and enhance their work experience, really making it easy to do their best work. And that's not just clinicians, but folks in roles across our entire organization, and we're just starting to see some of the potential of AI come to fruition, and that is super exciting. Q: What is the biggest challenge in health IT nowadays? EW: I have two that rise to the top of my list: ey're ensuring privacy and security, and addressing legacy applications and infrastructure. Because as much as we want to be able to take advantage of all the latest and greatest technology, we need to do it in a safe and secure way, and in order to do that, we have to also invest in the foundational elements, like the basic blocking and tackling of IT operations and application rationalization. It's not flashy to say we're going to spend money to shut something down, but unless we turn off systems that are no longer working or no longer serving us well, we can't create capacity to implement new systems to move us forward. So we've made significant progress here sunsetting and archiving legacy applications as we've implemented Epic, Workday and ServiceNow as our core enterprise platforms. And we still have a lot more work to do. Q: How else does AI play a role in your IT strategy at VCU Health? EW: Back in 2023, recognizing both the potential risks and benefits of AI, we launched an AI work group, and the purpose of that work group was to promote the use of AI in a safe and secure way. And our AI work group was comprised of leaders and clinicians from across the organization. We worked together to develop our vision for responsible principles and policy for the use of AI. And one of the key decisions in that space was whether AI should be its own thing, have its own strategy and governance, or if it's really part of everything we're doing and should be integrated with our existing IT strategic plan. If I look back, I think we made a wise decision to incorporate AI into our existing structure, because we're now able to leverage new capabilities across all disciplines using that same framework for evaluation and selection. As part of that work, we hired our inaugural chief data and AI officer to lead the modernization of our data architecture to provide a strong foundation for our work in AI. Data is obviously the fundamental thing that all AI is built on, and we needed a good environment to test and deploy innovative use cases. So our chief data and AI officer is responsible for the framework and all our teams that are empowered to deploy tools in their areas. Q: What does "innovation" look like in healthcare IT these days? EW: What I hope it looks like is us experimenting, testing and deploying novel solutions to our most pressing challenges, leading to true transformation. So not just incremental improvements, but really a leveling up and a true transformative effort. One of my favorite sayings is "what got you here won't keep you here," and that really applies to all of us in healthcare IT. Some of the challenges we mentioned — slim margins, staffing challenges, rapidly advancing technology, aging infrastructure — I view those as a call to action to us to think differently and to act differently, and we have to continue to push the boundaries of what we think is possible. We used to think it was innovative or kind of crazy to codesign technology solutions with patients and clinicians, and we now see that as an essential part of how we do our work. And in the future, I'd love for technology not just to be codesigned, but really be a true coworker, enhancing our capabilities and bringing the joy back in our work. n "We can't not talk about AI. One of our strategic themes here at VCU Health is workforce wellness, and one of our guiding principles around the use of AI is to empower team members and enhance their work experience, really making it easy to do their best work." — Ellen Wiegand